Look What the Web Dragged In: Teaching Robots to Lie and Other Modern Madness

Nights grow cool. Leaves begin to turn. Fall is here and with it comes a shower of random web items, stuff you may want to know even if you don’t want to use it. First and foremost we’re discussing doing something terrible with robots. Then we’ll explore the dark recesses of an artist’s mysterious love-hate relationship with Twitter. Finally: Conan, again, as Conan O’Brien continues to be pretty brilliant in leveraging his popularity on the web. Today, the web has dragged in omens, portents and jazz-flavored pop troubadours.

A few days ago we learned how Terminator truly begins: researchers at the Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing have taught robots how to lie. So–that’s pretty much it, then, right? The beginning of the end? Final word on the subject below.

Once there was a troubadour who had 3 million people a day to hang on his every 140 characters. Then he was gone, in the night, as if he’d never been there at all. His name was John Mayer. He left Twitter. And the world was sad. We have reached out to John Mayer via his Tumblr for comment. If we hear back from him, we’ll let you know. Meanwhile, you’d think a John Mayer song might be appropriate here. We disagree.